Azure Tables or SQL Azure?

Question

I am at the planning stage of a web application that will be hosted in Azure with ASP.NET for the web site and Silverlight within the site for a rich user experience. Should I u

Answer 1

Azure tables are cheaper, simpler and scale better than SQL Azure. SQL Azure is a managed SQL environment, multi-tenant in nature, so you should analyze if your performance requirements are fit for SQL Azure. A premium version of SQL Azure has been announced and is in preview as of this writing (see HERE).

I think the decisive factors to decide between SQL Azure and Azure tables are the following:

• Do you need to do complex joins and use secondary indexes? If yes, SQL Azure is the best option.
• Do you need stored procedures? If yes, SQL Azure.
• Do you need auto-scaling capabilities? Azure tables is the best option.
• Rows within an Azure table cannot exceed 4MB in size. If you need to store large data within a row, it is better to store it in blob storage and reference the blob's URI in the table row.
• Do you need to store massive amounts of semi-structured data? If yes, Azure tables are advantageous.

Although Azure tables are tremendously beneficial in terms of simplicity and cost, there are some limitations that need to be taken into account. Please see HERE for some initial guidance.